Food Pantry Offers More Than Just Meals At OKC Dream Center

Bread, canned goods and bags of chips are just a few of the items the OKC Dream Center handed out in their food pantry Saturday morning. But their clients say it's the kindness that keeps them coming back.

"Yes they are very essential," says Shelley Matthews, a regular client at the food pantry. "There's a lot of people that use these services that, honestly, would not eat. There is no way they would eat."

Shelley says this food pantry is different from others.

"Throughout the years I’ve had to go to places, this is by far the best in terms of kindness and how they help people,” she says. “I think they do amazing work."

And their work is all about "finding needs and filling them and finding hurts and healing them," according to the Dream Center's executive director Chase Parsons. He says Shelley's words mean everything.

"To hear people say that we're some of the kindest,” he says. "It makes it worth it to get to get up every day and change a life in a small or even big impactful way."

And their impact certainly isn't small.

"We have been able to serve over 2000 families and provide over 30,000 pounds of food," says Parsons.

At the end of each month, the Dream Center opens its food pantry to restock families' shelves and provide relief.

"We can't make it alone in the craziness of this world," says Parsons. "The more that we get to relationally come together and meet needs for each other… that's what makes us strong."

And food on the table is a good place to start.

"It's amazing,” says Shelley. “I really probably couldn't make it myself, so it's very essential and it means the world to me."